The House Of Silk

men who refuse even to introduce themselves.’
    ‘Perhaps not. But I would ask you to consider this: anything could happen to you in this house. To say that you are completely in my power may sound silly and melodramatic, but it happens to be true. You do not know where you are. Nobody saw you come here. If you were never to leave, the world would be none the wiser. So I would suggest that, of the options open to you, a pleasant dinner with me may be one of the more preferable. The food is frugal but the wine is good. The table is laid next door. Please come this way.’
    He led me back out into the corridor and across to a dining room that must have occupied almost an entire wing of the house, with a minstrel’s gallery at one end and a huge fireplace at the other. A refectory table ran the full distance between the two, with room enough for thirty people, and it was easy to imagine it in bygone times with family and friends gathered round, music playing, a fire roaring and an endless succession of dishes being carried back and forth. But tonight it was empty. A single shaded lamp cast a pool of light over a few cold cuts, bread, a bottle of wine. It appeared that the master of the house and I were to eat alone, hemmed in by the shadows, and I took my place with a sense of oppression and little appetite. He sat at the head of the table, his shoulders stooped, hunched up in a chair that seemed ill-designed for a frame as ungainly as his.
    ‘I have often wanted to meet you, Dr Watson,’ my host began as he served himself. ‘It may surprise you to learn that I am a great admirer of yours and have every one of your chronicles.’ He had carried with him a copy of the
Cornhill Magazine
and he opened it on the table. ‘I have just finished this one here, the
Adventure of the Copper Beeches
, and I think it very well done.’ Despite the bizarre circumstances of the evening, I could not help but feel a certain satisfaction, for I had been particularly pleased with the way this story had turned out. ‘The fate of Miss Violet Hunter was of no interest to me,’ he continued. ‘And Jephro Rucastle was clearly a brute of the worst sort. I find it remarkable that the girl should have been so credulous. But, as always, I was most gripped by your depiction of Mr Sherlock Holmes and his methods. A pity that you did not set out the seven separate explanations of the crime that he mentioned to you. That would have been most insightful. But, even so, you have opened the workings of a great mind to the public and for that we should all be grateful. Some wine?’
    ‘Thank you.’
    He poured two glasses, then continued. ‘It is a shame that Holmes does not devote himself exclusively to this sort of wrongdoing, which is to say, domestic crime where the motives are negligible and the victims of no account. Rucastle was not even arrested for his part in the affair, although he was badly disfigured?’
    ‘Horribly.’
    ‘Perhaps that is punishment enough. It is when your friend turns his attention to larger matters, to business enterprises organised by people such as myself, that he crosses the line and becomes an annoyance. I rather fear that recently he has done precisely that, and if it continues it may well be that the two of us have to meet, which, I can assure you, would be not at all to his advantage.’
    There was an edge to his voice that caused me to shudder. ‘You have not told me who you are,’ I said. ‘Will you explain
what
you are?’
    ‘I am a mathematician, Dr Watson. I do not flatter myself when I say that my work on the Binomial Theorem is studied in most of the universities of Europe. I am also what you would doubtless term a criminal, although I would like to think that I have made a science out of crime. I try not to dirty my own hands. I leave that for the likes of Underwood. You might say I am an abstract thinker. Crime in its purest form is, after all, an abstract, like music. I orchestrate. Others perform.’
    ‘And what do you want with me? Why have you brought me here?’
    ‘Other than the pleasure of meeting you? I wish to help you. More to the point, and it surprises me to hear myself say it, I wish to help Mr Sherlock Holmes. It was a great pity that he did not pay attention to me two months ago when I sent him a certain keepsake, inviting him to look into the business which has now caused him such grief. Perhaps I should have been a little more direct.’
    ‘What did you send him?’ I